Casting 'The Great Gatsby': Joel Edgerton to Play Tom Buchanan

By Eleanor Barkhorn

"Who should play Tom Buchanan in the Great Gatsby?," we asked last month, after negotiations fell through between director Ben Affleck and director Baz Luhrmann. We suggested everyone from Jude Law to Sam Worthington, while readers nominated Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jon Hamm, and The Social Network's Armie Hammer. But it turns out Luhrmann had his own ideas—he announced this week that he'd picked Joel Edgerton to play the snobby, adulterous Tom. A relative newcomer, Edgerton has done voice work in Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole and had minor parts in two of the Star Wars prequels.

Luhrmann ... confirmed he'd found his man: "In casting Tom one had to find an actor who could credibly be (as Fitzgerald describes him) 'one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven,' had five-star acting chops and in the big dramatic showdown scenes between Gatsby and Tom, hold the screen against Leonardo DiCaprio, in the appropriate age group. Any wonder, it has been a long and thorough journey. The simple truth is that Joel came into our rehearsal space in New York and fulfilled all of the above criteria, and then some."